


Hell and all its fury

by asterismal (asterisms)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jane Eyre Fusion, F/F, Female Harry Potter, Female Harry Potter/Female Tom Riddle, Female Tom Riddle, One-Sided Cygnus Black/Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-05 18:11:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21212906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asterisms/pseuds/asterismal
Summary: Orphaned at a young age and abandoned by her Aunt Petunia, Harriet Potter has no choice but to accept the governess position at Thornfield Manor. After all, as her aunt always took such pleasure in telling her, she has nowhere else to go.When she finally meets her charge, little Bellatrix Black, she decides there's nothing in the world that will make her leave. Not the girl's father, with his heavy gaze. Not the servants with their secrets.And especially not the strange sounds at night, which no one else seems to hear.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolf_of_Lilacs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [Wolf_of_Lilacs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/Wolf_of_Lilacs) in the [October_Flash_Fest_Part_Two](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/October_Flash_Fest_Part_Two) collection. 

> **Prompt:**
> 
> femHarry is hired as a governess for [Regulus? your choice here] Black's unruly daughter. FemTom is the mad wife hidden away in the attic.  
Harry is intrigued and horrified by rumors she hears and strange noises in the night. Tom, for her part, hasn't had anything to interrupt the monotony of her miserable existence in several years; Harry is the very thing she needs to, hmm, break free. :heybby:

There’s something wrong with this house.

This is the first thing Harry thinks as she stares up at the large manor. Behind her, she can hear the carriage pulling away, and there’s a part of her that longs to chase after it. But she doesn’t.

She has nowhere else to go.

Aunt Petunia was happy to tell her this many times before she left her care.

So, with a fortifying breath, she sets her shoulders, lifts her bag higher, and makes her way toward the large doors before her. Before she can even think to knock, they swing open, and a stern looking woman with slate-grey hair pulled into a severe bun is there to greet her.

“H-hello,” Harry says, shifting her bag so she can reach out one hand to shake, “I’m—”

“Ms. Harriet Potter,” the woman continues for her, and she doesn’t take her hand. Harry feels any hopes she may have had about this job sink in her chest. “You’re late.”

“The carriage—”

“I care not for your excuses, Ms. Potter. Simply be punctual next time you have an appointment to make, and we shall have no trouble at all.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry says quietly, and it takes everything she has not to let her gaze slide to the ground. For a moment, she thinks she might be chastised for it, like Aunt Petunia always did, but then the woman smiles.

“My name is Minerva McGonagall,” she says, and her voice sounds almost warm, “and I am in charge of the staff here at Thornfield. Please, come inside.”

That said, she steps aside, and Harry gets her first look at the inside of the large manor house.

It’s as beautiful as she’s always thought a house like this should be.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” 

Harry looks over her shoulder to see Mrs. McGonagall watching her take the sight in with a smile. Perhaps, Harry thinks, she isn’t that much like Aunt Petunia, after all.

“Yes,” Harry says with a grin of her own, and maybe this job might not be so bad, after all, “It is.”

Then she meets her charge.

Bellatrix Black is screaming her head off as the man who must be the master of the house, Cygnus Black, drags her down the hall by the arm. They share the same curly black hair and pale complexion, but where the man’s face is wide with heavy features, the girl looks almost like a little bird, she’s so thin. As they get closer, Harry spies another difference.

Where the man’s eyes are pale grey, his daughter’s are a deep, rich brown that looks almost amber in the light of the morning sun that streams in through the curtains.

“You must be Ms. Potter,” the man greets her jovially, as if he isn’t holding a screaming girl by the arm. Harry wonders absently what the protocol here is. For the first time in her life, she wishes she had Aunt Petunia with her to coach her on her manners.

“Yes, sir,” is the answer she eventually settles upon as she dips into a shallow curtsey. 

“Ah, what a  _ sweet _ girl you are,” the man says as his free hand rises to grip his daughter’s shoulder, shaking her until her screams cut off into choked back sobs, “Perhaps you’ll be a good influence on my little Bellatrix.”

“That’s why I’m here, sir.” Then, feeling as if that was perhaps too presumptuous, her gaze darts to the floor. “I mean, I’ll certainly try.”

“Hmm.” She can’t help but peek up at the man, only to see him watching her with an almost amused expression. Caught, she looks down once more, cheeks heating. “I’m certain you will.”

Before she can say anything else, Ms. Black breaks free from her father’s hold and charges at her. With a gasp, Harry just barely catches her by the arms, keeping the girl from tearing at her clothes and biting as she clearly wants to. 

“No!” The girl starts screaming again as she struggles in Harry’s hold. “No, no, no! I don’t  _ want  _ a governess. I want my—”

“That’s enough, Bellatrix,” Mr. Black says, as he strides forward to grab her once more.

His grip on the girl is harsher than before as he pulls her arms behind her back and tugs sharply, making her whine in protest. Harry’s shoulders ache in sympathy, and for all that the girl did just try to attack her, she really is just that: a _little_ _girl_.

“Please, Mr. Black,” Harry says, stepping forward to rest one hand gently on his arm. She does her best to look soft and imploring. “She’s just upset. I’m sure she meant no harm.”

When she looks down, she meets Ms. Black’s gaze. The girl is looking at her with clear surprise, and suddenly her scowl doesn’t look so fierce. 

Mr. Black huffs.

“I doubt it, Ms. Potter,” the man says, though he seems pleased at Harry’s attempt, “You’re not the first governess Bellatrix has attacked.”

Then Ms. Black changes her tune entirely.

“She’s right, father,” the girl says, looking and sounding quite dejected, “I was upset, and I behaved poorly. Please, will you let me go?”

Mr. Black looks down at her, surprised.

“We’re speaking in full sentences, now?” he asks, raising an imperious brow. Ms. Black sniffles. It’s an impressive show, Harry thinks. Then Mr. Black turns his gaze on her, and Harry feels her breath catch. He looks… strange. There’s a light in his eyes she’s never once seen directed at her before. “Perhaps you’ll do better than I dared to hope, Ms. Potter.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry says, feeling a sudden urge to take a large step back. She holds her ground, and the man smiles. “I hope so, sir.”

He releases his hold on his daughter, and the girl wastes no time in skittering out of his reach, all but ducking behind Harry’s legs to watch her father with a gaze far to wary for a girl of her age.

It’s the same look Harry used to wear, in the years before her uncle died. 

Something heavy and cold settles in her gut, and Harry decides then and there that she won’t be leaving this job unless it kills her.

Judging by the grip Ms. Black has on her skirts and the weight of Mr. Black’s eyes on her as she leads the girl away, it just might.


	2. Chapter 2

For the most part, her truce with the young Ms. Black holds.

The girl is a keen student, once she grows comfortable enough to be. As soon as she learns that Harry will not scold her for asking questions, she transforms. Where once she shied away, now she soaks in all the praise and instruction Harry can give her, looking to Harry like a flower turning towards the sun. She is loud and bright and, perhaps for the first time in a long time, she is not afraid. 

While Harry is pleased to see how Ms. Black grows more confident under her care, there is something in her that burns, deep and low.

She remembers being her age. 

She remembers the fear that an opening door would bring. The pain of always reaching for something beyond her, until she learned better than to ask for more than she was given. 

The others on the household staff avoid Ms. Black, with the singular exception of Mrs. McGonagall, and soon, they come to avoid Harry too. Whenever she passes a servant in the hall, it’s a tossup between a pitying look and whispers of witchcraft, because surely it would take the devil’s work to make Ms. Black behave. 

And every time, the fire burns hotter, just for a moment.

Because Ms. Black is not the problem, Harry knows. 

The problem is her _ father_.

One afternoon, just over a month into her stay, Mr. Black corners her in the library.

She’s stood beside a large window that overlooks the surrounding moor, idly paging through a book on bird species of South Asia, as Ms. Black has taken a shine to birdwatching and is always eager to hear more on her favorite subject. It’s an interesting read, for all that she doesn’t share Ms. Black’s fascination, so when the door to the library opens behind her, she doesn’t hear it.

“Good day, Ms. Potter,” Mr. Black greets her, breaking the silence.

At the sound of his voice, Harry flinches and snaps the book in her hands shut, placing it back on the shelf before whirling to face the door. Mr. Black is watching her with a curious expression, so she does her best to calm her racing heart, smoothing her hands across her skirts to give them something to do. 

“Good day, sir,” she says mildly. 

He didn’t mean to startle her, she knows, but it takes some effort to keep the sting out of her voice anyway. She tilts her head, a silent question, and Mr. Black abandons the doorway to approach her with his hands clasped behind his back.

“I wanted to thank you,” the man tells her as he comes to stand beside her, looking out over the moor.

Harry blinks, surprised. “Sir?”

“For taking such good care of my daughter,” he explains. He smiles at her, and he truly is as handsome as all the people in town used to say. “None of the others did nearly so well; apparently, it takes a special breed to tame her.”

Harry smiles back at him, as pleasant as she can. 

Is she supposed to be flattered?

She wants to take him by the ear and shake him, to ask how he can be so cruel to one so small, to force him to _ see _ what he is doing to his only daughter. But the worst thing is, she thinks he knows and does it anyway, and so nothing she says will change him.

“There’s nothing special about me, sir,” she says, demure, because she’s learned by now that men love nothing more than to flatter someone who does not believe in their own worth. Then, she chooses to take a risk. “Your daughter is a lovely girl, if one stops to listen.”

“Beyond the screaming, you mean,” Mr. Black says wryly. 

Harry bites her tongue, then forces a quiet laugh. “As you say.”

Mr. Black turns back to gaze out the window. The laughter fades from his expression, and he sighs. “She has too much of her mother in her,” he says.

Harry is only a little bit ashamed by how quickly her interest in the conversation is reignited. Of all the things Aunt Petunia managed to impart upon her, the love of gossip is among the least harmful, but it does nothing to keep her out of trouble.

“Her mother?” Harry prompts, biting her lip in the hope it may keep the eagerness from her face.

“A beautiful woman,” Mr. Black says proudly. Then he sighs again. “But also a mad one….” He trails off, and Harry does her best to shove down the disappointment she feels. Then Mr. Black glances her way, and he must see the interest she fails to completely hide. Shaking his head, he tells her, “You see, Ms. Potter, for many years, our marriage was as it should be. Then, after giving birth to my daughter, my wife… changed. She became violent; she would say the strangest things”

“I see,” Harry says, lowering her gaze to the floor, “I’m sorry.”

She’s heard the stories, of course. Ever girl has. She knows what terrible things can happen to a mother after giving birth. 

Mr. Black clears his throat, and she looks up again. He’s watching her, gaze intent, something dark and solemn in his eyes. “May I tell you a secret, Ms. Potter?” he asks, “Something terrible, which you must never tell another soul?”

Harry nods, chest tight with rising anticipation. “You may.”

“Three years ago, my wife killed herself.” Harry gasps, raising a hand to her mouth as if that could stop the sound. Mr. Black looks away, helpless anger across his face. “She tried to take my daughter with her.”

He takes a deep breath and looks up at the ceiling. 

Harry averts her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Potter,” Mr. Black finally says, voice thick with emotion, “I should not have laid this upon your shoulders. It was not right of me.”

Harry is already shaking her head. “Please, sir,” she says, stepping toward him, “There’s no need to apologize.” 

“You must never tell a soul,” Mr. Black repeats, the intensity of his voice catching Harry off guard as he grabs her wrist. She looks down and is struck by how large his hand looks upon her. “My daughter would be ruined.”

Harry turns her wrist in his hold so she can grab his wrist in turn and says, “I will not; I swear it.”

Before her eyes, it is as if Mr. Black has transformed into someone entirely new, and she knows that with this information, she can never look at him the same again. While she can never condone his rough treatment of his daughter, perhaps she should not judge the rest of him so harshly.

His _wife__, _Harry thinks. How awful.

Harry has never had a lover. Has never wanted one.

Once, when she was a girl, she’d had a friend named Ginny. They spent every spare moment in each other’s company, and to this day Harry need only close her eyes to recall the way her red hair blazed in the light of the sun, the way her cheeks glowed beneath her freckles as she blushed. She’d sworn to love her forever, and she had, until the other girl’s family moved away. She was so torn up at the loss, she thought she might die from the heartbreak.

And that was only friendship.

To have lost a wife…

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr—”

“Cygnus,” Mr. Black interrupts. At Harry’s startled look, he continues, softer, “I’d like it if you called me Cygnus.”

Harry hesitates, but after being given such a secret to hold, she feels she can afford the familiarity. 

“Cygnus, then,” she says. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine the pain.”

A moment passes where she thinks the man will reject her sympathy outright, will close off from her forever. Then, he speaks again.

“I know that many of the staff find me cold,” he says. He lifts his chin and wipes all traces of sorrow from his expression. Or, he tries. “They call me heartless, cruel. And perhaps I have been harsh with them, but I—”

Harry pulls her hand free of his loosened grip to rest it against his forearm instead.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” she says, perhaps too harshly. He smiles, and she feels heat rise in her cheeks. “I only meant—”

“I know, Ms. Potter,” Mr. Black says. His eyes flit to where her hand rests on his arm and his smile broadens into a grin. She feels it would be rude to withdraw it now, so she leaves it there. “But that is not my concern. You see, Ms. Potter, I want you to understand me. I hope that someday, we might understand each other.”

Harry freezes, then tears her hand away from Mr. Black’s arm as she takes a hurried step back. She blushes for a different reason, now, and she darts her gaze to the floor. She feels embarrassed. Has she—?

“Ah,” Mr. Black says. When she peeks back up at him, he’s watching her with a rueful grin. He bows shallowly at the waist and takes a step back. “I see I have overwhelmed you. My apologies again, Ms. Potter.”

He turns to go, and Harry reaches out to stop him, though she doesn’t understand why she does it. 

“No,” she says hurriedly, “It’s alright. I just—”

“I understand.” Cygnus smiles kindly at her, though he looks sad. “It is a heavy burden to place on one so young.”

Harry shakes her head, but she doesn’t know what to say. She feels confused, wrong-footed. As if she’s made a mistake but doesn’t know what it is. She wants him to stay, to explain, but all he does is bow again. 

“Have a pleasant evening, Ms. Potter,” he says, still with that sad, awful smile on his face. “I hope our next conversation will fare better.”

Then he leaves, and as the library doors click shut behind him, Harry is stuck with the feeling that she’s done something wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

Harry does her best to act as if nothing has changed, though it’s difficult when just the sight of Mr. Black puts her on edge. She’s never entirely sure whether she wants to avoid him or demand an explanation for all the things he told her that day in the library. 

Mr. Black doesn’t seem to try at all. He has become over-familiar with her, and the others in the manor have started to notice.

“What are you doing, Ms. Potter?” Mrs. McGonagall asks her one day.

Harry looks up from the spread of papers across the table. In the last week alone, Ms. Black has expressed numerous new interests, and she’s attempting to see how many of them she can fit into next month’s lessons. “I’m planning—”

“That is not what I meant.” Mrs. McGonagall sits across from her, leans forward as she folds her arms atop the table. “What are you doing with Mr. Black?”

Harry feels as if she’s been dunked in cold water. Then, the heat of shame spreads through her.

“Nothing,” she says, and she hides her clenched fists in her lap. “I’m not doing  _ anything  _ with him.”

Mrs. McGonagall sighs.

“Mr. Black is not the kind of man a girl such as yourself should be involved with,” she says, and she sounds tired. 

“Such as myself?” Harry asks. It takes everything she has not to sneer. 

Back home, there was no one who did not believe the stories Aunt Petunia used to tell. She should have known Mrs. McGonagall would be no different. 

“A girl who is kind,” Mrs. McGonagall explains, and Harry’s bitterness abruptly falls away. Surprise takes its place. “Mr. Black has a troubled history, Ms. Potter.”

Harry speaks before she can stop herself. “I know.” 

“You—” Mrs. McGonagall looks shocked. “You do?”

“He told me about his wife,” Harry says in a rush, the words all but spilling out of her. Something in Mrs. McGonagall’s expression freezes. Harry looks down at her lap, cheeks heating. “About how she, um..."

“Ah.” When Harry looks up, Mrs. McGonagall’s expression is peculiar, as if she’s looking at something very far away that only she can see. “He told you she killed herself.”

Now it’s Harry’s turn to freeze.

“Did she…” Mrs. McGonagall’s solemn gaze meets her own, and she suddenly doesn’t want to say the words aloud. She does anyway. “Did she not?”

A door opens down the hall. Mrs. McGonagall rises from her chair. They hear footsteps, and then two of the serving girls more prone to gossip spill into the room, laughing. When they see Mrs. McGonagall, they school their expressions and straighten their posture. Mrs. McGonagall nods in approval.

Then, she looks back to Harry. 

“Remember what I’ve said, Ms. Potter,” she warns, and then she strides toward the door.

As soon as the door swings shut behind her, one of the serving girls leans over to whisper to her friend, and they both burst into laughter once more. Harry doesn’t know what was said, but her cheeks burn anyway as she goes back to working on her lesson plans.

If it weren’t for Ms. Black’s reliance on her care, she thinks she would be gone from this place within the hour. 

To distract herself from her tumultuous thoughts and the strange warning from Mrs. McGonagall, Harry throws herself into her work. Weeks pass, and she becomes almost comfortable in her routine. 

Mrs. McGonagall is more gentle with her instructions than before, and she always has time to answer her questions, permitting, of course, that they concern only safe topics. At the same time, the strange looks from the others on the household staff grow rarer, less piercing. While Mr. Black remains on her mind like a splinter she can’t quite remove, the man’s daughter is as delightful as ever and grows more so every day. 

It isn’t until she’s chaperoning Ms. Black’s most recent attempt to hunt for glow worms one evening that the tentative peace is disturbed. 

Across the moor, the sound of hoofbeats draws her eye, and she huffs when she sees what must be Mr. Black returning from his most recent business trip. He’s only been gone three days, but they were quite possibly the loveliest three days she’s had since she arrived.

Apparently, he catches sight of them as well, for he steers his horse from the path, slowing to a walk as they approach. Ms. Black rises from where she’s crouched in the grass but otherwise doesn’t attempt to make herself presentable, choosing instead to plant herself behind Harry’s legs and peek up at her father from there.

“Good evening,” Mr. Black calls to them. Once he’s close enough, he observes them with a satisfied smile. 

“Good evening, sir.” Mr. Black raises an eyebrow, and Harry clears her throat, reluctantly correcting herself. “Cygnus.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ms. Black’s head turn sharply to look up at her. If she checks, she’s certain she’ll see suspicion on the girl’s thin face.

“And what are the two of you up to?” Mr. Black asks. 

“Ms. Harry told me she used to catch glow worms when she was little,” Ms. Black says, one hand reaching to grip at the fabric of Harry’s dress. “I wanted to try.”

“Hmm.” Mr. Black’s eyes catch on the streak of mud on his daughter’s face. “You’ve made a mess of yourself.”

“I’ll make sure she’s clean before bed,” Harry says, cutting off any attempt her charge may make at defending herself. She’s seen the way Mr. Black responds to any hint of his daughter’s defiance, and she’d like to shield the girl where she can. “Seeing as it’s my fault she’s in such a state.”

“Very well,” Mr. Black says. Then, with a sudden, charming grin he bids them farewell as he directs his horse toward the manor once more.

“Ms. Harry?” Harry looks down to see Ms. Black’s worried expression. “Can I keep looking for bugs?”

Harry bites her lip to keep from laughing at such a question being said so seriously. She knows Ms. Black would only be offended if she gave in to the urge. 

“Of course,” she says, voice perfectly controlled, and Ms. Black cheers as goes back to poking through the grass. 

Harry gives them one more hour before she decides it’s become far too dark and cold to remain outside any longer. Ms. Black pouts, but she doesn’t fight the decision, knowing by now that if she behaves, Harry will be far more likely to bring her out again another night.

As they pick their way across the moor, Harry’s eyes stray toward the manor house, drawn by the glow of candlelight that shines through the many windows and spills across the ground at their feet. In more than one window, faint, shifting shadows block the light, and she imagines she can tell who each one is by the way they move.

Then she sees movement where it doesn’t belong. 

At the top of the house, in what must be the attic, there’s a figure in the window. 

Harry gets the strange feeling it’s watching them.

“Ms. Black,” she says, and when the girl hums in acknowledgement, she asks, “What’s in your attic?”

“I don’t know,” Ms. Black says, distracted by the glow worm she’s managed to trap in her hands. She’s determined to keep it in her room tonight. “Father says I’m not allowed to look.”

Harry opens her mouth to ask another question. Before she can, Ms. Black shrieks as the bug in her hands crawls up her wrist to hop back into the grass, and Harry knows she’ll get no more information from the girl tonight.

When she looks back to the window, the shadow is gone.


End file.
